Purity of Focus: The YouTube Factor
by Titus Gee
It took me three days to get hooked and there’s no going back.
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year is one of my constant companions — and I don’t mean “You” or that dimly reflective silver cover they printed. What I really mean (what they really mean) is YouTube.
In one year it went from non-existent to a culture-altering force that has entertainment moguls moaning like seasick newspaper barons and practically everybody else scrambling to get a piece, make a piece or watch a piece made by someone else.
Meanwhile the advertising people write long and disbelieving dissertations about how advertising might actually have to be entertaining (“Can you believe it?” “That’s unnatural! An abomination!”) in order to be effective.
So, what’s the attraction? iFilm has been around forever, along with a few other video clip sites. Nobody put them on the front of Time. How come the ‘reality’ of lonelygirl15 is suddenly front-page news in the LA Times?
Because YouTube has something the others never did. Mixed in among the pirated short films and 80s television commercials with a background of strewn laundry and untidy living rooms, lies the heart of YouTube.
The reason so many people find it impossible to look away from the constant stream of bleary, ranting faces and ad hock puppet shows or homemade lightsaber battles can be traced to a single force.
Its name is Passion.
And it is the only currency presently feeding most of the masses that have created the YouTube phenomenon.
While the ad execs pace their conference rooms looking for ways to cash in on the model, the denizens of a new online environment are rushing forward waving flags made out of gym socks above their heads and conquering the future.
The reason they succeed is that they absolutely love what they’re doing. And the world can’t bear to miss it.
There is something very pure and powerful about communication that has no motive outside of pure expression, that doesn’t have to earn its keep.
Free from the burden of selling its creative wares, YouTube has reshaped the face of communication.
And with free distribution as a spring board, its children are taking their raw materials directly to the audience.
The YouTube nation manages to hold its audience, despite the lack of polish (or even basic hygiene), because it has what so few of the products of the artistic industries can claim — Purity of Focus. They ‘Tube’ because their souls are absolutely running over with whatever esoteric, emotional, or artistic material they post.
Sure lots of it is dreck — and even some of the dreck is spell-binding — but in the hands of these, the untutored Tubers, the medium of grainy video has yielded original thought, independent philosophy and occasional gems of pure artistry — not to mention unbelievable new uses for candy and soft drinks.
